Improvements and injection control of a discharge excited XeF(C–A) laser

The performance of the discharge excited XeF(C–A) laser at a pumping rate of 2.76 MW/cm3 and a pressure of 2.2 atm has been improved through the reduction of the ratio of cavity length to discharge length and the use of the five-component gas mixture of He-Xe-NF3-F2-Kr. In order to increase the utility of the XeF (C–A) gain, the optical resonator was shortened from 1.0 m to 0.76 m with 0.5 m gain length. It was found that an optimized very small amount of F2 may effectively increase the laser output by a factor of ~1/4. Output energy of 1.35 mJ for an internal high-Q cavity with a coupler transmission of 7% at 477 nm was measured by an ED-200 energy meter. Lasing occurredwhen the same mirrors were mounted externally with Brewster windows or conventional flat mirrors sealing the discharge chamber. Using an excimer laser-pumped dye laser, we also realized injection control of the discharge XeF(C–A) laser with a positive branch confocal unstable cavity of M = 1.375.